16 July 2012

I bought 3 packs of Zis-5 trucks to use as Fiat truck stand in models for my Polish Early War army a while back and just recently assembled them.

I was in for a surprise, as I had thought the trucks would be as simple as the airplane boxes (made up of 3-4 parts). I was wrong, this box contains a total of 18 parts that you have to cut, trim and assemble. It does not get easier with the plastic and construction being soft and bendy - you have to watch out not to snap the headlights and the like. For some reason the model has an intricate suspension frame that is rather pointless from a practical point of view and I think a few of the parts are completely unnecessary and that it would have been better to make a few things "single piece" like the back wheels. The assembly was at least 30 minutes per truck. Thankfully I did not buy the 12 trucks as I had planned from the start or else I would go crazy.

This is one of those cases where you may want to pay for resin trucks to save time. The Zvezda trucks are fairly cheap but when you compare that to resin trucks from other manufacturers that often sell trucks in packs of 2-3 then you are saving very little money unless you intend to buy 30+ trucks.

The end result isn't bad, but man am I happy that I did not have to assembly more than 3.